Parikh stars with a one-man show

WITH just three games to go Loughborough Town remain well clear at the top of the Everards Premier League and remain on course for an unprecedented treble following their seven wicket victory away to Illston Abey.

WITH just three games to go Loughborough Town remain well clear at the top of the Everards Premier League and remain on course for an unprecedented treble following their seven wicket victory away to Illston Abey.

Vivek Parikh’s fireworks with both bat and ball strengthened Town’s lead at the top as we reach the business end of the season.

On a green flat wicket Illston batted first and it was soon clear there was nothing for the pace bowling of Sam Cliff and Neil Gamble as captain Dips Patel started to ring the changes as early as the seventh over.

Town were unable to make the early breakthrough but tight bowling made runs hard to come by and the 50 did not come up until the 21st over.

The next over saw the breakthrough Town had been looking for with the score on 60, man-of-the-match Viviak Parikh took the first of his five wickets, S Sandagar trapped lbw.

Illston still had a good platform to build what should have been a challenging score but a second wicket for Parikh and one for Martin Gidley stemmed any planned run chase and after 31 overs the home side were 90 for 3.

The 32nd over saw the rare sight of James Taylor bowling and he took the first of his four wickets with his first ball.

Coming into the final four overs Illston were a modest 144 for 6 and a wicket in each of the next two overs saw Illston 165 for 8.

Parikh cleaned up the last two wickets while bowling the 49th over for the addition of just four more runs to the total with Parikh taking 5 for 54 from 14 overs and Taylor 4 for 43 from nine overs.

Town’s reply was a one man show. Parikh came in following the early loss of James Bull for one in the third over with the score on seven.

After an over to settle in, Parikh totally demolished the Illston bowling attack.

In an innings lasting just 47 minutes he hit seven fours and eight sixes to reach 90 from just 43 balls.

In one four over spell Town scored 64 runs of which Parikh’s contribution was 47.

He was eventually stumped with the score on 118 in just the 13th over.

Taylor took up where Parikh left off, ending on 44 not out.

Loughborough lost Flowers for six but Mitchell Buck’s huge six in the 21st over saw Town comfortably home taking maximum 24pts.

Next weekend they host Ashby on Saturday and Sunday sees them in the final of the Sunday knock out cup at Hinckley against Lutterworth who they also happen to play in the County cup final the weekend after that. .